A look at various scenes around Southeast Alaska with commentary on whatever happens to come to mind at the time.From fishing for salmon and halibut to cooking Mexican Quiche, there is no shortage of subjects that catch my attention. There is always a story to everything- sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but hopefully always entertaining.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

You'll Get Through This

Those who know me know that I can take the smallest of life's trials and blow them up into earth shaking, catastrophic events in my mind. Fortunately I've been blessed with the ability to find humor in most of life's daily struggles. After my initial frustration or anger over an event has passed, I can turn it into a fairly humorous story. Losing six fish in a row to an aggressive sealion is terribly frustrating. The humor comes the next day when it surfaces with one of my flashers stuck to his head. Hopefully it will serve as a warning to any fish in the area. It would be better yet if it attracted other sealions thinking he had a fish and they all attacked him. Poetic justice I would say. In any event, whether it's losing money to predators or medical emergencies or children making choices that you know will not turn out good, we all have something unpleasant to deal with in this life. Jesus said it pretty plainly-" In this life you will have trouble, but fear not, for I have overcome the world." That's hard to remember when you're going through something unpleasant. If you are a believer, you start to wonder- "where is God in all of this? What possible good can come from______________." Fill in the blank. It just doesn't make sense. Last Saturday I went fishing with my daughter Jennifer. We had a good time, even though the morning didn't start out so great. I was angry and frustrated that I was unable to get some ice from the cold storage either Friday evening or Saturday morning. Oh, I could have gotten some if I had been patient and waited an extra thirty minutes or so, but time is money so I left without it. Anyway, though fishing started off slow, it started picking up as the afternoon wore on. We were catching cohos and some of them were pretty good sized. By 6:30 I figured we better get back to town before the cold storage closed so we could unload these fish. We were about two miles off the beach, well on our way into our hour and a half trip across Icy Strait when there was a tremendous loud bang, the boat shuddered and the engine started screaming. I didn't know what had happened. I slid the gear into neutral and looked around to see if we had slammed into a log that may have been partially submerged. No, nothing around. I put the boat in gear but a loud grinding sound was the only response. Not what I wanted, to be stuck in the middle of Icy Strait with darkness not far away and many of my friends already back in Hoonah. I was unable to reach any of the boats that I knew who would be large enough to tow me in. As it was, Bill Williams on the F/V Searcher, a man I didn't know, heard my call and stopped what he was doing to tow me in. It was a move that probably cost him more than a few fish and several hours of his time, to say nothing of the extra fuel. The bottom line is, I wasn't abandoned. God made sure of it. This past weekend my daughter Liz's husband had a bout of kidney stones that required several nights in the hospital and a stint in the emergency room. I'm sure that wasn't part of their plans for the weekend. "hey I've got an idea- why don't you suffer with kidney stones for a few days and take a little vacation in the hospital? It will be great!" Nope, don't think so. Doesn't sound like fun. Stuff like that never is, but life happens. In this book by Max Lucado he asks a rather profound question. Is God always good? When the outcome we're looking for doesn't happen, is He still good? Or is it only when we get what we want that He is? When the promotion or raise comes through. When the cancer is in remission or your son or daughter is accepted into the college they were hoping to go to. Is he good when the transmission breaks down in the middle of a large body of water? Is he good when your job has dried up and the bills are piling up and you don't know where the next month's mortgage payment is going to come from? It's easy to say yes when everything is going well. Just recently Hoonah lost two of it's long time residents. Both had terminal cancer. If you were to ask their families if God was good, would they answer with a resounding YES!? I don't know. If I were facing that, would I answer yes? I'm not dealing with the death of a loved one right now. I hope I don't have to in the near future. What I do know is that in my life, God has been very good. When we left the farm He provided a place to stay and work so I could support my family. In multiple storms He's always brought me home safe. He plucked me from the icy waters of Lynn Canal after the plane I was in crashed one February day. Did I like listening to the silence of an airplane engine as we descended down to the cold, pewter colored water below? Nope. When I heard the rescue helicopter coming to pick us up though, had anyone asked, I would have said, "you bet God is good." Right now I'm writing this from the comfort of my home. Liz's husband is on the mend, the part for my transmission is on it's way and He's even provided me a fellow in the harbor who knows his way around engines and transmissions and assorted other mechanical things. Anyway, the bottom line is, through all of our trials and problems, as the book states, with God's help, you'll get through this.

About Me

I was born in Marion Ohio where I lived for nineteen years. I joined the navy and served four years, homeported in both Key West Florida and Charleston S.C. My wife and I became affiliated with a religious group and eventually joined up with some of the members in Hoonah. When I discovered that people would pay me to catch fish, I bought a commercial license and have been involved in the fishing industry since 1978. About 2001 I started writing about my experiences at Game Creek, the religious community where I lived with about 120 other people. That's how Wilderness BLues came about. My wife and I have seven children and soon to be ten grandchildren.